Students indulge in increasingly unusual pursuit — reading for pleasure

Wednesday

May 28, 2008 at 12:01 AM

Amid the rubble of construction in East Stroudsburg High School-South, students and teachers gathered after-school last week in a quiet corner of the library to partake in a pastime that may be endangered — reading for fun.

DAN BERRETT

Amid the rubble of construction in East Stroudsburg High School-South, students and teachers gathered after-school last week in a quiet corner of the library to partake in a pastime that may be endangered — reading for fun.

The group, made up predominantly of sophomores and juniors, had gathered to discuss "Into the Wild," Jon Krakauer's book about Christopher McCandless, a young idealist who set out to find himself in the Alaskan wilderness only to starve to death in an abandoned bus. Adapted by Sean Penn into a movie that was released last year, "Into the Wild" examines the impulse to opt out of mainstream society and seek a closer connection to nature.

On Wednesday, students sat around tables decorated with prop campfires and talked about some questions raised by the book — whether McCandless harbored a desire to die rather than compromise his ideals, and why he changed his name to Alexander Supertramp when he dropped out of society, among others.

"His dad gave him that name. He hated that name," said Ronald Rasmussen Jr., 17, an 11th-grader.

They also wondered whether McCandless was noble or egotistical. Students tended to see him more sympathetically. "I liked that (the book) was about a guy who did what he said he was going to do," Rasmussen said during a break.

The teachers saw him as a far more flawed figure because he had cut himself off from his parents. "I think he was very much like his peers but he didn't want to be," said Brooke Langan, a teacher who was participating in the discussion. "As a parent and as an adult, we see things differently from you."

Both the handful of teachers and the 19 students who took on the extra reading — some for extra credit — welcomed the chance to talk about literature outside the strictures imposed by the education system.

"I want to spend more time discussing literature with children," said Trish Tiernan, a 10th-grade English teacher who organized the book talk by requesting free books from the publisher and inviting students to join her. "It's more personal and less constricted than in school. I want to show them that this can be something you do as an adult."

For sophomore Nandi Mims, 15, the best aspect of the group was something simpler: Everyone who showed up on Wednesday had actually read the book and was ready to participate.

Even as book groups proliferate through chain stores and Oprah Winfrey, the amount of actual time that Americans spend reading for pleasure seems to be tailing off significantly as they reach their teen years and beyond, judging from recent research.

In November, the National Endowment for the Arts released an analysis called "To Read or Not to Read," which diagnosed what it called a "serious national problem" in the widespread decline of reading.

"The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming," wrote Dana Gioia, a poet, critic and chairman of the NEA, in introducing the study. While reading habits and ability among elementary age students are increasing by many measures, those habits falter as students age.

"There is a general decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans," Gioia continued. "Most alarming, both reading ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates"

Among 17-year-olds, voluntary reading had diminished by 9 percentage points, going from 31 to 22 percent over a 20-year period, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In contrast, a majority of 9-year-olds said they read almost every day for fun.

College graduates also had seen a marked decline in reading for pleasure, dropping from 82 to 67 percent over two decades.

"If, at the current pace, America continues to lose the habit of regular reading, the nation will suffer substantial economic, social and civic setbacks," wrote Gioia, who noted links between reading and civic engagement, education and income.

But other observers sifted through the data from this study and an earlier one titled "Reading at Risk" to note other trends at play. To some, the NEA's research did not pay enough attention to how frequently people read online.

Still, the act of reading books for fun and discussing the work did feel different — and rare — to the students and teachers at East Stroudsburg. "It allows us to go beyond the confines of the classroom," said Sue Rasely, an English teacher at the school who was part of the discussion. "When you open it up to other teachers and students, you open up the book. It opens it up to different experiences, which allows different readings."

Many of the students polled during the session said they read little on their own time. Sophomore Louis Sommers, 16, provided a seemingly rare exception; he reads about 18 books Manga books each month, which are essentially graphic novels produced in Japan.

But Rasmussen seemed to be more typical. "I'm more of a kinesthetic kind of guy," he said. When asked if he would read more on his own time after Wednesday's session, he offered an answer. "Maybe," he said, "if they're books like this."